


a fighter

by abeyance



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (attempt), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heartache, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Love, Near Death Experiences, References to Depression, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 06, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, True Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 23:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19859566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abeyance/pseuds/abeyance
Summary: 9 times Bellamy thought he lost her + the one time he did (and wouldn't take that as an answer)





	a fighter

( _You're a fighter,_ Bellamy screamed. _Now get up and fight. Get up and fight.)_

The first time he thought she was dead, it was more of a benefit than deterrence. 

Because along with her was Finn, and both of them didn't like his rules. He was too scared to admit their power of co-leadership, and by having her gone, he wouldn't need to think of it anymore. All that needed to come back was the rest of the group’s will of thinking of them as just another two victims of the grounders. Another two reasons to build the walls and fight.

But they came back.

-

The second, he didn't know for sure. But he told himself she was dead, just to make his mind at ease with preparation when the confirmation came.

He didn’t see much among the dirt and sweat and blood and fire around him, the stars ringing through his vision as he was beaten to his half death - but her voice was accompanying it all, all the same.

And if his last memory of her was her voice, screaming at him to follow her, so _he_ wouldn't die… it was bittersweet enough to be satisfying.

But then she came back, this time running into his arms.

-

The third time wasn't a long period - no more than a split second of panic crashing through at the sight of her limp form in Finn’s arms.

But she was just knocked out harshly. Just asleep. She came back at the sounds of his assurances and doctorly orders.

-

The fourth was agony.

For no reason but wanting to know where she was. If she was alive in that place.

She left him with a burning touch of her lips on his jaw, a harsh hug paired with harsh words that were meant to be soft. 

And he couldn't help but admit to himself that her abandonment did more to his soul than the decision to kill hundreds of innocents did.

And he couldn't help but let her absence get to him. He didn't stop his thoughts he had held back that first time; they were co-leaders. They needed each other. No one could make the decision they made together.

And that's when he noticed why he held those thoughts back the whole time; he was aware, which made him desperate, which made him distracted. 

Because they couldn't lose Clarke. 

He found her eventually. Not the same Clarke, and he had to be mad at her for it. But within the persona she was lying under, was only beneath it all, burying itself so she didn't have to face it. 

And although he blamed her, he was doing the same thing on his own terms. He cared about Gina. But not in the way she expected him to care.

The pieces that were connected to those lips he knew, the ones that that burned his jaw, were scattered throughout the forests she caravaned, the people she made the mistake of trusting, and those who attempted to change her into what he deserved all the same.

But somehow, amongst it all, she came back. Just a bit more broken than before, but so was he.

-

The fifth was another moment of blind, senseless panic.

It was the feeling of the small vibrations of the walkie as he called to her through it, begging her to respond. The bleariness of his mind as his boots crunched the gravel, searching for anything that resembled her blond head. 

And when he saw the white sheet, there were no possibilities going through his head - only the things that were impossible for him to let himself do or say to her anymore. all of those chances where he should have just went with his gut of their constantly uncertain mortalities. 

It was a cold sweat that swept over him, flushing him into pulling the sheet and just getting the truth and finality of this possibility over with and into reality.

But it wasn’t her at the side of that river.

She came back. She came back in a rover, next to a man trying to kill her. But with the help of their trust they had built from the ashes of Wanheda, she was soon safe.

-

The sixth time was all too close to being real.

It was something that happened on top of his pounding heart, that lifeline aching for all of it to just be a bad dream.

But the doors didn’t open. He looked to the spot where she told him to use both his heart and head; the conversation now only painted as her own eulogy. Did she plan it?

The Commander of Death; the nickname she allowed them to press upon her. And although it had chipped away, inside...maybe it did not completely. Maybe the guilt of that lever still remained, and she needed to balance it.

His hand would burn when he thought of such reasons why she was left down there and he spared. The hand that placed itself to cover her own, the touch that made him just as responsible for those deaths as herself. But she only allowed herself to take the blame of those innocents.

That spot on his jaw would burn when he gave into his starve of touch, letting Echo kiss him all over. The small of his back would ache where she clasped her hands around him when they realized the radio cut out, and his heart and temple would burn when he decided to use his head over heart. It was the only way he wouldn’t cry through his thrusts into the woman beneath him, show her how unfair this relationship was really starting out on being. But he learned to swallow his tears and come to reality, to the know that any chance of her blond head accompanying at night was as enough as the earth turning green again.

Nevertheless, she came back - In his dreams, she was there - but then his dreams turned red and she wasn’t.

She really came back, years later, surrounded by enemies and danger. But he used to head she asked him to use, and he got her back. She wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t alone.

She came back.

-

The seventh, he had no idea.

It was months into his grief, he up in the sky and she on the ground. The world pulled one too many challenges on her to face alone. There was a gun in her hand with the barrel against her temple, and he was going to lose her before even knowing she had survived the Wave.

But then a bird flew over, and her mind cleared.

She found a little girl, and her happiness began to come back.

-

The eighth was barely different from the seventh.

Her mind was clouded, not by hunger or loneliness, but the strange new air - and instead of wanting to kill the people telling her that they were not her friends, she aimed to kill for herself. To kill _that_ would fix everyone’s problems at last.

Once again, he had no idea - his own fury was directed somewhere else. 

But in that house, with a knife to her own neck and her mother’s words begging her to just _do it…_ he almost lost her, once again, to her own mind. 

But then Murphy walked in on her, and cared just enough to blow the fog away.

She came back. He choked her and she stabbed him, but it was all out of the weakness they gave each other. And the purple of her neck was the only thing he could see until it partly faded.

-

The ninth was almost real.

They had proof; they had people who went through the same thing beside her to prove it. They had videos of the past experiments, they had this being in front of them that was _not her._

As much as one would expect, it nearly killed him along with the whole situation. Their relationship was newly healing, something that he told himself was still fragile - until it was lost from him.

_She_ was lost from him. Now, when it was too late, he knew that the relationship _healing_ was actually just growing. Even between six years, their bond had continued from where it left off and they simply were too hesitant to give in. he learned that coming back down, the girl he was meeting again, was still the girl hed left all those years ago. She was the same; the only difference being her having to force herself into an adaption of life without him. The only thing different about him was having to adapt to a life without her.

And when they reunited, when they could live with each other again, the only part of those walls that didn’t crumble away was the acknowledgement of _how much they wanted and needed each other in their lives._

They only didn’t voice them. Not completely. Not to the full extent of what exactly that all really meant.

But now she wasn’t coming back, and it was too late. He said what he ought to have into the inky river instead, just in case the Heavens were a literal universal thing and she could hear him.

And that was the process, only until the next morning’s meeting. Because she was always so still, and her Prime would only twirl the hair that wasn’t hers when antsy. 

But there was a small disturbance in the room. It seemed off, it seemed... _busy._ And so his eye traveled to where the movement is, and that unusual pattern of her finger was _odd_ . Odd, but in a way that begged to not be ignored. And so he watched it, until lessons came back to him, until that language of dots and dashes came back to him the same way it hit him, putting it all together - because it came to im, spelling _ALIVE_ because she came back to him right there.

She was still there. She was still _alive_.

His hope came back.

And along with it, she came back. In a moment he thought was her last, she came back.

-

The tenth _was_ real.

He wouldn’t want to believe it, not ever, but he was looking at her body that was as still as the heart monitor.

This wasn’t leaving her behind. This wasn’t her walking into the wild, or any trick of the mind. Her heart did not have someone to remind it to beat, and in regards to it, his heart was beating enough for both of them.

They were so close - at the final step. She was one step from _fully there_. 

And then he ran out of luck.

But his brain has been on that one drive for days - _cant lose Clarke can’t lose Clarke cant lose Clarke. Save her save her save her._

And although the track should have just ended, his brain’s train plowed straight into hope.

Because somehow, _he still had hope_.

And that hope was pressed into her body with every compression trying to _break through, break through_ to her heart _so he could get it to beat_ . His hope wouldn’t run out until shes _breathing_ , and shit, he meant it.

Earth skills was a good ten years ago; but basics stuck. Along with all those memories. Of him when he was six years younger, of him on the first years and months back on the arc, of him shamefully only days or weeks ago. Of him wondering what her lips would feel like, the ones that left that searing kiss on his jaw or gave him a speech that he looked back onto the very moment he stood in. 

_Head and heart,_ he thought with each compression. _Help her heart by being her head._

He would not let those, once again, be some of his last words to her. Not along his begging - his begging for her to come through those lab doors, begging for her to now just _wake up._

It was no more than a second’s hesitation before he gave her his air - it only filled with how many times he thought about how he would kiss her, if he ever thought it to be right to - and how awful the situation was for that fantasy to shatter either way.

And he begged; his head begged the same words repeating in a cluster over and over, ineligible despite the common words of how he _needed her, how she cant give up now, how she needs to COME BACK._

_Come back come back come back come BACK._

And his voice begged; the only tell of what he said in his head and what he was vocalizing was the pounding of his head and the burning of his clogged throat - and with it all, his heart searing with the fact that the only reason why he was finally touching her lips was because she was _dead,_ and she cant be, not this soon, not when she only just came back so many short times in the past month it wasn’t fair - non of it was fair, nor did it make sense in the means of why it _only happened to them._

_What did we do to get here?_

Each desperate pound against her chest rung his ears off - the only thing searching was the need to hear her _breathe_ , please, please _breathe_ , I need you, you need to fight, your a fighter, get up and _fight PLEASE._

And then it was another breath into her, and another, her lips leaving a dreadful feeling with the empty response. his body and hands and lips were trembling with the adrenaline of it all - and then; at his cheek, the most awful, wonderful sound he could yet recall.

The memory of her cheek kiss, all those years and losses ago, burned where she breathed now, as his fingers skimmed all over her responding face - because _it worked, she’s okay,_ and now he might never be able to _stop_ holding her - _just breathe, just breathe. Just breathe._

And she _did_. she came back.

And she embraced him, after she looked into his eyes like an _angel_ …

  
And fully _Clarke._

**Author's Note:**

> i have a companion fic coming up for this, which is basically post-clarke-resurrection events. I didn't want it to conflict with this.
> 
> Show me the sun readers: im almost back. i promise.


End file.
